12 ms·

Deaf, Blind Sue Over Web Shopping

35 points by jalanco 14y ago

jalanco 14y ago
From the article: "The U.S. Department of Justice is expected to issue new regulations on website accessibility later this year that could take a broad view of the ADA's jurisdiction over websites. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. "That could mean websites will be required to include spoken descriptions of photos and text boxes for the blind, as well as captions and transcriptions of multimedia features for the deaf, said Jared Smith, associate director of WebAIM, a nonprofit group that trains and evaluates companies on Web accessibility. "Mr. Smith also advises companies to ensure that people with motor disabilities can navigate websites without the use of a mouse, and to use plain language and a strong design to aid people with cognitive or intellectual disabilities."
potatolicious 14y ago
In an interesting side note, the whole situation is getting worse in mobile-land. On iOS the accessibility framework (which allows devs to label UI elements for screenreaders, among other features) has been almost entirely co-opted for use in automated testing. Lacking a real way to trigger UI elements programmatically testing frameworks have almost universally fallen back on hijacking the accessibility features of the OS to do its work. This makes me very concerned for actual app accessibility, since not only are we failing to implement accessible features (Apple's defaults are quite good, though imperfect) but we're actively breaking it instead.
- bdcravens 14y ago
  Can you explain further? How does using the Accessibility framework in a way other than designed to facilitate testing (code that really shouldn't make its way into the final app anyways) get in the way of Accessibility in the app used by the end user? Are the internal hooks into the Accessibility framework overridden at the API level?
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    None of the testing frameworks I'm aware of alter the Accessibility framework itself - that's not the concern. The problem is that we're corrupting the data being fed into the framework to further our testing ends. Things like accessibilityLabel and accessibilityValue which are supposed to power screen readers are now instead filled with semantic data to facilitate testing. UI elements that aren't (and shouldn't) be screen readable now have accessibilityLabels attached to permit testing. UI elements that should have accessibilityLabels have their default values overridden so some test can have visibility into internal state, etc. You can avoid this - by #ifdef'ing your codebase straight to hell to make sure these don't make it into the shipping app, but I also don't see this being done. On the plus side it seems like TDD in general isn't a thing in the iOS development scene, though it's picking up, so most apps haven't messed with accessibility yet.
    - bdcravens 14y ago
      So am I understanding correctly: the attributes assigned to UI elements can have hints for accessibility sake, and the testing tools are filling those attributes with tags to automate to act/assert an element? Info that's valuable to the testing framework, but garbage for accessibility? Sounds like the testing frameworks have an obligation to provide a tool that can "clean" code for the final working version. Is there a way to do this in XCode without #ifdef'ing? (such as a pre-compilation plugin?)
      - potatolicious 14y ago
        Pretty much, yes. The more complex the app the worse it tends to get. Say you have a button that says "Send Email" - the default accessibility label would have the screen reader just read the text, and that's great. And your testing framework can layer on top of this and, say, make sure the button works. It gets a bit more complicated when you apply more rigor to testing - you need the ability to query the state of your program in a way that isn't truly necessary for usability, and forces developers to implement things in ways that are far from intuitive. Take an example, let's say you're building a Facebook app. Instead of "Like This Post", you might have to label the button "Like joebob's post at 3/23/2012 2:17PM" just so the testing framework can uniquely identify one button over another. And this brokenness is hidden, since the visible button is still labeled "Like This Post". Worse, say you want to test that a view changes size when interacted with. Now you're literally embedding sizes and coordinates into accessibility hints/values/labels to make this happen. This devolves very, very quickly. There's been some promising progress on iOS automated testing - the fact that it's happening represents a maturing of the platform and an embrace of quality engineering rather than the seat-of-pants approach we've seen thus far. That being said, the most popular frameworks are still woefully immature.
bionsuba 14y ago
"That could mean websites will be required to include spoken descriptions of photos and text boxes for the blind, as well as captions and transcriptions of multimedia features for the deaf" "Mr. Smith also advises companies to ensure that people with motor disabilities can navigate websites without the use of a mouse" As if I needed more reasons to not host my sites in the US.
- rpedroso 14y ago
  I didn't take this quite as literally as Mr. Smith put it. He doesn't mean websites might need to hire voice actors to read out your content. What he means is that you must actually use HTML's alt and title attributes properly so that screen-readers can produce these spoken descriptions. That strikes me as a fairly reasonable burden.
  - whichdan 14y ago
    Not to mention, it's an easy way to improve SEO[1]. [1] http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/using-alt-attributes-smartly.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/using-alt...
- bdcravens 14y ago
  You don't want to develop your sites in a way that helps the disabled access it? Is this a value of your company?
  - ishansharma 14y ago
    But what if I am a small developer and I don't have resources to add all the voice stuff? Sometimes, it is just not possible to develop for a small subset of users for financial or technical reasons.
    - DanBC 14y ago
      Accessible webs sites do not just help a small subset of users. Accessibility helps all users.
socalnate1 14y ago
This has the potential to destroy online commerce in the US, and severely damage one area where mom n' pop stores can still thrive in America. Amazon and other giant retailers could still survive, even if they where made to comply with all of these requests (although it would slow innovation considerably). Small online stores couldn't afford it and would simply shut down. This is bad for everyone. This reminds me of what happened in Julian, CA - a small mountain town. An overzealous lawyer decided to start suing everyone with steps into their tiny bookstores and coffee shops as a means to extort money out of them. Several just shut down. http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060729/news_1n29pinnock.html http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060729/news_1n29pinnoc...
- runarb 14y ago
  bookstores and coffee shops as a means to extort money out of them. Several just shut down. (http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060729/ http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060729/ news_1n29pinnoc...) Sounds intresting, but the link is broken...
  - socalnate1 14y ago
    Fixed
- rpedroso 14y ago
  I think some are overstating the potential difficulties of making the ADA apply to American websites. A large part of compliance is just utilizing the accessibility tools built into HTML: semantic markup, proper use of alt and title tags, etc. I do still see the possibility of predatory litigation. To protect small businesses, maybe the burden should shift to the web developers that they hire. Much like we expect contractors to know the ins-and-outs of building codes, we should come to expect web development agencies to understand their clients' legal obligations.
  - obviouslygreen 14y ago
    Absolutely not. There is a huge difference between something like plumbing where you do one or a few sets of well regulated activities and building infrastructure for businesses across many industries. Web programmers have a lot to be aware of just to do their own work, suggesting they should be responsible for their employers' or clients' legal obligations is completely unreasonable.
jt2190 14y ago
The intent of this is to help people access web content and applications, but it hasn't worked very well in the past, and it won't work very well now, because "accessibility" is very hard to define in concrete terms that a programmer can work with. Most organizations cheat and limit the definition to "can be read by a screen reader" and perhaps "can be navigated with a keyboard." Few if any address other accessibility problems, because it's just too damn hard to test for them all. (Reading comprehension, for example.) A much better approach IMHO is to encourage companies to create or open their APIs, and to encourage those who need better accessibility or their advocates to create alternate interfaces to their services. Think of it like a "marketplace of user interfaces". Perhaps instead of passing a law to force existing UI's to change, the government should work with private industry to encourage open APIs.
- pyre 14y ago
  | "marketplace of user interfaces" Most of which would be used for phishing.
  - jt2190 14y ago
    > Most [alternative users interfaces] would be used > for phishing. That's a legitimate concern, but one that I'm sure could be overcome with a little thinking and work. After all, how do companies prevent phishing now?
    - pyre 14y ago
      Currently no one provides an API that allows someone to reskin their e-commerce application.
- bgruber 14y ago
  As a sighted individual i totally agree with you regarding APIs as the best course. Screenreaders are always going to be, at best, a kludge to let those with visual disabilities use a system expressly designed around the ability to see it. Different means of interaction can provide a much better experience. However, in my interactions with people with visual disabilities, I've come to understand that for many of them, the ability to use the same technology as everyone else is actually quite important. Everybody else uses Windows, why shouldn't they be able to? Everybody else shops on the Amazon website, why not them? To say they should use a separate interface is tantamount to telling them to go to the special grocery store for the blind people. I don't really know that this is a constructive way of thinking, but it's important to consider.
redorb 14y ago
If websites want their business they will use the alt and title tag appropriately, I could be in the minority thinking we all ready have too many laws.
- rayiner 14y ago
  The ADA is a decades old law. What's changed is that the Internet has become a critical too for people to live their lives, and not just something nerds use. It's entirely appropriate that the ADA be applied online now. And let's face it, putting up some alt tags and making things keyboard navigable is far less expensive than making things compliant in the real world. Remember, this I'd just for sites engaged in commerce. And if this stifles "innovation" in web site design, well that would be fucking fantastic. We really don't need more "innovation" by web site designers--they've already done enough damage to the internet.
- derleth 14y ago
  The problem with this is the same one that lead to the ADA mandating ramps: The handicapped are too small a population with too little money for businesses to financially justify adding ramps simply to get their business, but without the ramps the handicapped can't shop at all. It's a Nash equilibrium in that the first business to unilaterally add a ramp loses money and becomes less competitive than their rampless competition, so the steady-state strategy (the one chosen by players who all know every other player's strategy) is to not build any ramps at all. Nobody can move unilaterally without losing, so nobody moves at all. This is why the government does these things: To break Nash equilibria that have harmful externalities. In this case, the harmful externality is handicapped people having shittier lives. Much the same logic applies to what the EPA does.
- arrrg 14y ago
  I don’t think you quite understand why this area is regulated at all: precisely because disabled people are too small a minority to have that kind of power. The disabled being denied access to critical infrastructure is a market failure†. That’s why there is a discussion about regulation. It would be super great if everything could be solved by the market (politicians tend to be clumsy, not the brightest and not super efficient), sadly I cannot see that being possible. A world in which the market solves everything neatly along our moral views would be pretty awesome, I just don’t think that’s the world we live in. I want market solutions to as many problems as possible and will happily accept them whenever they exist. If they don’t, however, I’m more than happy to begrudgingly accept a regulatory approach. — † Underlying this is the assumption that the disabled should not be violated in their human dignity. If you do not share this view then you might arrive at different conclusions and I don’t think I want to talk to you any further.
bdcravens 14y ago
This applies to online shopping, but many ADA policies will end up affecting startups. Just an example, think of a new AirBNB competitor: they facilitate reservations like a travel agency or hotel lobby, businesses that are subject to ADA regulations. Of course, ADA takes a little additional time and care (not much, but hey, if you're agile and running lean, your MVP can't let regulations get in the way, right?) The government wants to regulate my site, but they just don't get it. ADA is the result of a dying industry that don't apply to me because I'm disrupting. DISRUPTING!
- pyre 14y ago
  I could see it only applying once you reach a certain level. If you only have 100 customers, then it doesn't really matter, but once you reach 1 million customers, it might start to matter.
  - bdcravens 14y ago
    The moment you start becoming inaccessible, then that's your starting point. Various statistics point to 1 to 2% of the population being blind. So using that example, 50-100 is where you need to become concerned about accessibility.
jiggy2011 14y ago
What about a marketplace for a solution to these problems? If I build a website I can't tell how disabled friendly it is, the best I can do is follow practises I find on some accessibility blog and maybe test it in a screenreader. It would be a value add service to have a disabled person test their use of my site for various tasks and give me honest feedback.
noonespecial 14y ago
While I support the general cause of increased accessibility, I have a philosophical problem with "perfect or none at all" legislation. When the laws are passed, they are passed expecting lots of perfect making everyone shiny-happy, but they often get a lot of "none at all" with a side of frustrated resentment instead.
arbuge 14y ago
This rubs me wrong. It would be impossible for small businesses operating websites to comply with these directives unless they're made really simple to implement, which I doubt is realistic. My father was blind for 30 years until he died but never tried to impose on society in any way in that period - I can't imagine him ever agreeing in the slightest with the proponents of these ideas.
- nonamegiven 14y ago
  Like all things, there's a balance, and like all good balances it should be flexible. "No" is not acceptable, at least not to me. I have no disabilites, but I think that there should be accommodation for disabilities in society. Perhaps below a certain business income or traffic the requirements are reduced or go away, and that's where we're not very good at balance. As commerce, government and social interaction move online, it becomes imperative (yes) that we make accommodations for disabilities. The more we are, the better we are, so it's good for "the rest of us" as much as for "them." In the end, it's likely an "eat your spinach" issue as said in the article: you bring more people and benefit in by your accommodation than the accommodations cost. Where that falls down is the micro-operations, and that's where I think we need some balance. Big ops can afford all this and more, but you won't get more big ops unless you let the small ops grow through that stage.
manicbovine 14y ago
Cherry-picking the article: > .... and to use plain language and a strong design to aid people with cognitive or intellectual disabilities.... How is this measured? This is the most disconcerting part of the article to me. Taking it to an extreme, is Amazon liable when someone with cognitive impairments accidentally buys $10,000 of stuff with one-click shopping for failure to understand the concept? Is ebay liable for inadequately explaining the concept of a bid at the level of someone with a 70 IQ?

35 points by jalanco 14y ago

From the article: "The U.S. Department of Justice is expected to issue new regulations on website accessibility later this year that could take a broad view of the ADA's jurisdiction over websites. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. "That could mean websites will be required to include spoken descriptions of photos and text boxes for the blind, as well as captions and transcriptions of multimedia features for the deaf, said Jared Smith, associate director of WebAIM, a nonprofit group that trains and evaluates companies on Web accessibility. "Mr. Smith also advises companies to ensure that people with motor disabilities can navigate websites without the use of a mouse, and to use plain language and a strong design to aid people with cognitive or intellectual disabilities."

potatolicious 14y ago

In an interesting side note, the whole situation is getting worse in mobile-land. On iOS the accessibility framework (which allows devs to label UI elements for screenreaders, among other features) has been almost entirely co-opted for use in automated testing. Lacking a real way to trigger UI elements programmatically testing frameworks have almost universally fallen back on hijacking the accessibility features of the OS to do its work. This makes me very concerned for actual app accessibility, since not only are we failing to implement accessible features (Apple's defaults are quite good, though imperfect) but we're actively breaking it instead.

bdcravens 14y ago
Can you explain further? How does using the Accessibility framework in a way other than designed to facilitate testing (code that really shouldn't make its way into the final app anyways) get in the way of Accessibility in the app used by the end user? Are the internal hooks into the Accessibility framework overridden at the API level?
- potatolicious 14y ago
  None of the testing frameworks I'm aware of alter the Accessibility framework itself - that's not the concern. The problem is that we're corrupting the data being fed into the framework to further our testing ends. Things like accessibilityLabel and accessibilityValue which are supposed to power screen readers are now instead filled with semantic data to facilitate testing. UI elements that aren't (and shouldn't) be screen readable now have accessibilityLabels attached to permit testing. UI elements that should have accessibilityLabels have their default values overridden so some test can have visibility into internal state, etc. You can avoid this - by #ifdef'ing your codebase straight to hell to make sure these don't make it into the shipping app, but I also don't see this being done. On the plus side it seems like TDD in general isn't a thing in the iOS development scene, though it's picking up, so most apps haven't messed with accessibility yet.
  - bdcravens 14y ago
    So am I understanding correctly: the attributes assigned to UI elements can have hints for accessibility sake, and the testing tools are filling those attributes with tags to automate to act/assert an element? Info that's valuable to the testing framework, but garbage for accessibility? Sounds like the testing frameworks have an obligation to provide a tool that can "clean" code for the final working version. Is there a way to do this in XCode without #ifdef'ing? (such as a pre-compilation plugin?)
    - potatolicious 14y ago
      Pretty much, yes. The more complex the app the worse it tends to get. Say you have a button that says "Send Email" - the default accessibility label would have the screen reader just read the text, and that's great. And your testing framework can layer on top of this and, say, make sure the button works. It gets a bit more complicated when you apply more rigor to testing - you need the ability to query the state of your program in a way that isn't truly necessary for usability, and forces developers to implement things in ways that are far from intuitive. Take an example, let's say you're building a Facebook app. Instead of "Like This Post", you might have to label the button "Like joebob's post at 3/23/2012 2:17PM" just so the testing framework can uniquely identify one button over another. And this brokenness is hidden, since the visible button is still labeled "Like This Post". Worse, say you want to test that a view changes size when interacted with. Now you're literally embedding sizes and coordinates into accessibility hints/values/labels to make this happen. This devolves very, very quickly. There's been some promising progress on iOS automated testing - the fact that it's happening represents a maturing of the platform and an embrace of quality engineering rather than the seat-of-pants approach we've seen thus far. That being said, the most popular frameworks are still woefully immature.

bionsuba 14y ago

"That could mean websites will be required to include spoken descriptions of photos and text boxes for the blind, as well as captions and transcriptions of multimedia features for the deaf" "Mr. Smith also advises companies to ensure that people with motor disabilities can navigate websites without the use of a mouse" As if I needed more reasons to not host my sites in the US.

rpedroso 14y ago
I didn't take this quite as literally as Mr. Smith put it. He doesn't mean websites might need to hire voice actors to read out your content. What he means is that you must actually use HTML's alt and title attributes properly so that screen-readers can produce these spoken descriptions. That strikes me as a fairly reasonable burden.
- whichdan 14y ago
  Not to mention, it's an easy way to improve SEO[1]. [1] http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/using-alt-attributes-smartly.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/using-alt...
bdcravens 14y ago
You don't want to develop your sites in a way that helps the disabled access it? Is this a value of your company?
- ishansharma 14y ago
  But what if I am a small developer and I don't have resources to add all the voice stuff? Sometimes, it is just not possible to develop for a small subset of users for financial or technical reasons.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    Accessible webs sites do not just help a small subset of users. Accessibility helps all users.

socalnate1 14y ago

This has the potential to destroy online commerce in the US, and severely damage one area where mom n' pop stores can still thrive in America. Amazon and other giant retailers could still survive, even if they where made to comply with all of these requests (although it would slow innovation considerably). Small online stores couldn't afford it and would simply shut down. This is bad for everyone. This reminds me of what happened in Julian, CA - a small mountain town. An overzealous lawyer decided to start suing everyone with steps into their tiny bookstores and coffee shops as a means to extort money out of them. Several just shut down. http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060729/news_1n29pinnock.html http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060729/news_1n29pinnoc...

runarb 14y ago
bookstores and coffee shops as a means to extort money out of them. Several just shut down. (http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060729/ http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060729/ news_1n29pinnoc...) Sounds intresting, but the link is broken...
- socalnate1 14y ago
  Fixed
rpedroso 14y ago
I think some are overstating the potential difficulties of making the ADA apply to American websites. A large part of compliance is just utilizing the accessibility tools built into HTML: semantic markup, proper use of alt and title tags, etc. I do still see the possibility of predatory litigation. To protect small businesses, maybe the burden should shift to the web developers that they hire. Much like we expect contractors to know the ins-and-outs of building codes, we should come to expect web development agencies to understand their clients' legal obligations.
- obviouslygreen 14y ago
  Absolutely not. There is a huge difference between something like plumbing where you do one or a few sets of well regulated activities and building infrastructure for businesses across many industries. Web programmers have a lot to be aware of just to do their own work, suggesting they should be responsible for their employers' or clients' legal obligations is completely unreasonable.

jt2190 14y ago

The intent of this is to help people access web content and applications, but it hasn't worked very well in the past, and it won't work very well now, because "accessibility" is very hard to define in concrete terms that a programmer can work with. Most organizations cheat and limit the definition to "can be read by a screen reader" and perhaps "can be navigated with a keyboard." Few if any address other accessibility problems, because it's just too damn hard to test for them all. (Reading comprehension, for example.) A much better approach IMHO is to encourage companies to create or open their APIs, and to encourage those who need better accessibility or their advocates to create alternate interfaces to their services. Think of it like a "marketplace of user interfaces". Perhaps instead of passing a law to force existing UI's to change, the government should work with private industry to encourage open APIs.

pyre 14y ago
| "marketplace of user interfaces" Most of which would be used for phishing.
- jt2190 14y ago
  > Most [alternative users interfaces] would be used > for phishing. That's a legitimate concern, but one that I'm sure could be overcome with a little thinking and work. After all, how do companies prevent phishing now?
  - pyre 14y ago
    Currently no one provides an API that allows someone to reskin their e-commerce application.
bgruber 14y ago
As a sighted individual i totally agree with you regarding APIs as the best course. Screenreaders are always going to be, at best, a kludge to let those with visual disabilities use a system expressly designed around the ability to see it. Different means of interaction can provide a much better experience. However, in my interactions with people with visual disabilities, I've come to understand that for many of them, the ability to use the same technology as everyone else is actually quite important. Everybody else uses Windows, why shouldn't they be able to? Everybody else shops on the Amazon website, why not them? To say they should use a separate interface is tantamount to telling them to go to the special grocery store for the blind people. I don't really know that this is a constructive way of thinking, but it's important to consider.

redorb 14y ago

If websites want their business they will use the alt and title tag appropriately, I could be in the minority thinking we all ready have too many laws.

rayiner 14y ago
The ADA is a decades old law. What's changed is that the Internet has become a critical too for people to live their lives, and not just something nerds use. It's entirely appropriate that the ADA be applied online now. And let's face it, putting up some alt tags and making things keyboard navigable is far less expensive than making things compliant in the real world. Remember, this I'd just for sites engaged in commerce. And if this stifles "innovation" in web site design, well that would be fucking fantastic. We really don't need more "innovation" by web site designers--they've already done enough damage to the internet.
derleth 14y ago
The problem with this is the same one that lead to the ADA mandating ramps: The handicapped are too small a population with too little money for businesses to financially justify adding ramps simply to get their business, but without the ramps the handicapped can't shop at all. It's a Nash equilibrium in that the first business to unilaterally add a ramp loses money and becomes less competitive than their rampless competition, so the steady-state strategy (the one chosen by players who all know every other player's strategy) is to not build any ramps at all. Nobody can move unilaterally without losing, so nobody moves at all. This is why the government does these things: To break Nash equilibria that have harmful externalities. In this case, the harmful externality is handicapped people having shittier lives. Much the same logic applies to what the EPA does.
arrrg 14y ago
I don’t think you quite understand why this area is regulated at all: precisely because disabled people are too small a minority to have that kind of power. The disabled being denied access to critical infrastructure is a market failure†. That’s why there is a discussion about regulation. It would be super great if everything could be solved by the market (politicians tend to be clumsy, not the brightest and not super efficient), sadly I cannot see that being possible. A world in which the market solves everything neatly along our moral views would be pretty awesome, I just don’t think that’s the world we live in. I want market solutions to as many problems as possible and will happily accept them whenever they exist. If they don’t, however, I’m more than happy to begrudgingly accept a regulatory approach. — † Underlying this is the assumption that the disabled should not be violated in their human dignity. If you do not share this view then you might arrive at different conclusions and I don’t think I want to talk to you any further.

bdcravens 14y ago

This applies to online shopping, but many ADA policies will end up affecting startups. Just an example, think of a new AirBNB competitor: they facilitate reservations like a travel agency or hotel lobby, businesses that are subject to ADA regulations. Of course, ADA takes a little additional time and care (not much, but hey, if you're agile and running lean, your MVP can't let regulations get in the way, right?) The government wants to regulate my site, but they just don't get it. ADA is the result of a dying industry that don't apply to me because I'm disrupting. DISRUPTING!

pyre 14y ago
I could see it only applying once you reach a certain level. If you only have 100 customers, then it doesn't really matter, but once you reach 1 million customers, it might start to matter.
- bdcravens 14y ago
  The moment you start becoming inaccessible, then that's your starting point. Various statistics point to 1 to 2% of the population being blind. So using that example, 50-100 is where you need to become concerned about accessibility.

jiggy2011 14y ago

What about a marketplace for a solution to these problems? If I build a website I can't tell how disabled friendly it is, the best I can do is follow practises I find on some accessibility blog and maybe test it in a screenreader. It would be a value add service to have a disabled person test their use of my site for various tasks and give me honest feedback.

noonespecial 14y ago

While I support the general cause of increased accessibility, I have a philosophical problem with "perfect or none at all" legislation. When the laws are passed, they are passed expecting lots of perfect making everyone shiny-happy, but they often get a lot of "none at all" with a side of frustrated resentment instead.

arbuge 14y ago

This rubs me wrong. It would be impossible for small businesses operating websites to comply with these directives unless they're made really simple to implement, which I doubt is realistic. My father was blind for 30 years until he died but never tried to impose on society in any way in that period - I can't imagine him ever agreeing in the slightest with the proponents of these ideas.

nonamegiven 14y ago
Like all things, there's a balance, and like all good balances it should be flexible. "No" is not acceptable, at least not to me. I have no disabilites, but I think that there should be accommodation for disabilities in society. Perhaps below a certain business income or traffic the requirements are reduced or go away, and that's where we're not very good at balance. As commerce, government and social interaction move online, it becomes imperative (yes) that we make accommodations for disabilities. The more we are, the better we are, so it's good for "the rest of us" as much as for "them." In the end, it's likely an "eat your spinach" issue as said in the article: you bring more people and benefit in by your accommodation than the accommodations cost. Where that falls down is the micro-operations, and that's where I think we need some balance. Big ops can afford all this and more, but you won't get more big ops unless you let the small ops grow through that stage.

manicbovine 14y ago

Cherry-picking the article: > .... and to use plain language and a strong design to aid people with cognitive or intellectual disabilities.... How is this measured? This is the most disconcerting part of the article to me. Taking it to an extreme, is Amazon liable when someone with cognitive impairments accidentally buys $10,000 of stuff with one-click shopping for failure to understand the concept? Is ebay liable for inadequately explaining the concept of a bid at the level of someone with a 70 IQ?